Thursday

Today’s diner of choice for breakfast was a place downtown near Battery Park called “The Diner” (wonder how they came up with that name?)  Laura had pancakes and I had a waffle (with maple syrup, cream and fruit – I was trying to be healthy!)

We then walked down to Battery Park to get on a ferry to see the Statue of Liberty and visit Ellis Island. For the first time on this trip our luck was out and we arrived to find a massive queue of people. We were able to skip the ticket line as we had our NY City Pass, but it still took about an hour to get through security and onto the dock. For almost everything else we’ve done on the holiday we’ve been lucky and the queue has always been short when we joined and long by the time we were finished. We’ve also seemed to have been really lucky with the people we’ve met, the places we’ve eaten and the timings of everything. Very strange!

Battery Park and World Trade Center Memorial (the globe is from the original WTC Plaza)

When the boat arrived, we sat on the top deck and had a great view of the Manhattan skyline as we sailed over to Ellis Island. The weather had turned a bit cloudy and it was cold upstairs, but we both enjoyed the view.

Lady Liberty

Manhattan skyline from the Ellis Island ferry

As the Statue of Liberty is currently closed for renovation, we stayed on the boat and went straight to Ellis Island. The immigration museum is fascinating and there are loads of stories to read and information to digest, but we had other things to do so we didn’t linger too long.

The great hall on Ellis Island

Back in Manhattan we went to Times Square and posed in front of the webcam with a silly sign. The HD webcam might not have been working though, so perhaps our sign was missed! Here it is in case you didn’t see it.

Posing for the webcam in Times Sqaure

We did plan to go back to Ellen’s Stardust Diner for dinner but there was a massive crowd of people forming a scrum to get in and we heard a rumour that there were some famous Broadway stars in there. We didn’t fancy queuing, so we went back to McGees again!

In McGees we shared some appetisers and a plate of sliders (mmmm, mini burgers) and I drank a ridiculously strong Cosmo. The couple at the table next to us, who turned out to be from California heard our accents and started talking to us, once again discussing the differences between the UK and America. The woman asked if everyone in England loved Kate, we didn’t know which Kate she meant straight away but we got into a conversation about how the royal family are in the news all the time in the US so we realised she meant Kate Middleton. We were enjoying a good conversation, sharing our travel stories and life stories when all of a sudden the husband received a text, they looked worried then started to have little digs at each other, we stopped talking to them, paid our bill and left them to it!

We then popped to Grand Central Terminal to marvel at the building and have a nosey around.

Grand Central Terminal

After that we went to the Rockefeller Center and got our timed slot to visit the Top of the Rock Observation Deck. The elevator ride to the top was a surprise as the elevator ceiling is see through, a film is projected onto it and the lift shaft is illuminated in blue as you zoom up. It was really cool.
From the observation deck the views over the Manhattan skyline were stunning. It almost didn’t seem real. Right at the very top on the 70^th floor you get a brilliant view as there’s no railing or fence to get in the way (it’s safe though as the floor is set back from the one below).

The view from the Top of the Rock

Me on the Top of the Rock

We soaked in the view and took lots of pictures. It was beautiful.

After the Top of the Rock we got the Subway downtown to the Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village where we had a reservation at 10pm. We both joked that we might be the only ones in there, but it turned out to be fully booked and people were queuing for reserve entry. We were allocated a table and stood in a queue with the few other people that had arrived early like us. We got chatting to a lovely couple visiting from Holland (although she was actually from Spain). We compared notes on New York City and it made the half hour pass really quickly.

When the 8pm people had left we all filed in. Much to our shock we were seated right next to the stage! Ooooh, rule 1 of comedy venues is don’t sit at the front if you don’t want to get picked on or quizzed!

We couldn't have been any closer to the stage

The room is underneath a bar and very small and intimate. I think the compere said it held 80 people. The toilets were stupidly small and held two people and required a complicated push me, pull you, shuffle here, shuffle there style of entry and exit.

The next 2 hours were brilliant. We were entertained by 6 comedians (plus the compere) and by the end my face hurt from laughing so much. Each comedian seemed to have been on loads of American TV shows or was a writer for some comedy and had solid gold acts. And we didn’t get picked on at all!

At the end of the show the waiting staff then give every table their bill (or “check” to use the American phrase) and we settled up. It’s very different to the UK where everything is paid in advance, I liked it though.

After the show we felt like staying out a bit longer (it was our last night after all), so we wandered around the street, but in the end we went to the bar upstairs from the Comedy Cellar as it seemed really nice. It was. In the bar were many of the comedians we’d just seen. We sat at the bar and chatted to the barman Maciej (he moved to the US from Poland when he was 4). We drank more beer and ended up having a great night. Behind the bar was a little TV monitor showing the comedians where were doing the midnight show. Amusingly, the bar’s only toilets were downstairs in the comedy club, so when we both needed to go we had to go down a “secret” staircase, shuffle past the comedians waiting to go on stage and then walk right through to the club, passed the stage to the tiny toilets in the corner. Crazy.

Derrick, drunk guy (John) and Laura - who both had the same calculator watch

We also met a comedian called Derrick in the bar and spent time chatting to him (he could do a fab impression of Obama). At about 3am we started saying our goodbyes to everyone we’d met and got the subway home. At home we facetimed Sam (who was at work) and Tina & Emma (who were also at work!). It was very weird to think that we were just going to bed, yet they’d just arrived at work. In the future. It was tomorrow. Clearly we’d drunk enough! And so we went to bed.